Seattle Police Chief announces new taskforce to combat gun violence

SEATTLE - Gun violence is spiking in the city of Seattle-- six separate incidents happened in the last two weeks, and half of them were deadly.

Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz announced on Friday that he's creating a task force in an effort to stop the violence.

Diaz said they're pulling every resource they have to make this task force work. There is no additional budget, and they're not adding anyone to the force. He said they're going to be moving people around from different departments. 

Ideally, he wants more cops, but this is what they have to work with.

"Clearly, the victims aren't being heard and suspects are going unabated," said officer Mike Solan, the president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild. "So, it's a major problem in terms of the public safety conversation."

Solan told FOX 13, the lack of staffing is affecting the local force and subsequently how that's impacting the community.

"It's almost unattainable to be a police officer here," Solan said. "We've been without a contract now for almost two and a half years. And, we've lost close to 600 officers in three years. Now, we don't have enough officers to answer 911 calls for service."

Solan said the system is more supportive of criminals than victims, and that's what we're seeing play out in the city.

"The criminals don't seem to have any accountability for their actions," Solan said. "They're feeding off of the lack of accountability for their actions. They're now victimizing and re-victimizing people at a pace that's unheard of."

Now, the Seattle Police Department is ramping up its commitment to slowing gun violence.

"If you are trafficking women, if you are selling drugs, and if you are committing crimes with a gun -- the Seattle Police Department is coming for you," said Diaz.

Diaz is pulling around 50 to 60 officers and detectives to make up this task force. They will cover four parts of Seattle -- Aurora, Central District, north end, and downtown.

"Some of our detectives are getting re-routed from some of their work," Chief Diaz said.

That means some cases could be affected.

"We are going to have to triage a lot of the work that we're doing on this level of violence, so a part of that is I'm trying to pull every level of resource," Diaz said. "We're squeezing everything out to make sure we reduce this level of violence. It's unacceptable. We can't have people being shot."

The task force is already in the works. Diaz said they'll have their first formal meeting on Monday. The goal is to have them out and patrolling next weekend.

According to the chief, Seattle Police have recovered more than 600 guns this year already.